Contemplation

Croft credits her artistic style to the hundreds of young children she taught in her 30 years as a teacher. The daily interactions with children, and immersion into their concrete thinking, rests on her canvases set into a story. The use of text cites children storybooks where picture and text go hand-in-hand. 

The presented works were created in the spirit of allyship with focus on the Black Lives Matter movement. As a whole, these oil paintings create an empathic narrative sparked from Croft's many years forming emotional connections with young African American children as a teacher. The heart of each work’s narrative is 'too,' meaning 'also'. It is the absent but implied word at the end of Black Lives Matter - and the artistic lens of each painting. 

Since 2012, Croft's work has been in numerous exhibitions in Georgia, the Southeast, the Midwest, and New York City. In the summer of 2021, she had her first major solo exhibition entitled, TOO: An Orientation of Spirit. Later that year, NYC Phoenix Art Collective in New York City invited Croft to present this same exhibition virtually on their website. Croft's paintings have been published in several periodicals, newspapers, and as the cover for a book of poetry entitled, A Thousand Scattered Moments. Croft is a self-taught artist. She lives in Athens, Georgia and commutes daily to her art studio in Jefferson, Georgia.